Example (Supernova 1604, also known as Kepler's Supernova, Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Star):

Using the Historical Supernovae plugin

Enable the tool by clicking the tool-bar button "Load at startup"

Set date and time (29 April 1006 year for SN 1006A as example)

Section [Supernovae] in config.ini file

You can edit config.ini file by yourself for changes of the settings for the Historical Supernovae plugin - just make it carefully!

ID

Type

Version

Description

Plugin

Stellarium

last_update

string

0.2.11+

0.11.4+

Date and time of last update

update_frequency_days

int

0.2.11+

0.11.4+

Frequency of updates, in days

updates_enable

bool

0.2.11+

0.11.4+

Enable updates of historical supernovae catalog from Internet

url

string

0.2.11+

0.11.4+

URL of historical supernovae catalog

Catalog of historical supernovae

You can modify the supernovae.json file manually using a text editor. If you are using Windows, it is strongly recommended to use an advanced text editor such as Notepad++ to avoid problems with end-of-line characters. (It will also color the JSON code and make it easier to read.)

Warning: Before editing your supernovae.json, make a backup copy. Leaving out the smallest detail (such as a comma or forgetting to close a curly bracket) will prevent Stellarium from starting.

The path to the directory which contains supernovae.json is something like:

Light curves

In this plugin implemented simple model of light curves for different supernovae. Typical view of light curve for supernova type I you can see below (right scale in days) and this model used for plugin:

For supernova type II we use typical light curve with plato, which you can see below (right scale in days):

On both images for light curves of maximum brightness marked as day 0.

Version history

Plug-in version

Stellarium version

Significant changes

0.2.3

0.11.0

First public version of plugin

0.2.7

0.11.1

Added SN2011FE, fixed few bugs, improved info for display

0.2.8

0.11.2

Fixed few bugs

0.2.9

0.11.3

Fixed few bugs (stabilization of code)

0.2.11

0.11.4

Added GUI to plug-in

0.2.12

0.12.0

Use new rendering engine of core

0.2.14

0.12.2

Improvements for search tool. Updated code. Improvements for GUI.

0.2.16

0.12.3

Improvements for labels displaying.

Acknowledgment

We thank the following people for their contribution and of the valuable comments: